8.6 Bookmarks

Bookmarks are somewhat like registers in that they record
positions you can jump to. Unlike registers, they have long names, and
they persist automatically from one Emacs session to the next. The
prototypical use of bookmarks is to record "where you were reading" in
various files.

The prototypical use for bookmarks is to record one current position
in each of several files. So the commandC-x r m, which sets a
bookmark, uses the visited file name as the default for the bookmark
name. If you name each bookmark after the file it points to, then you
can conveniently revisit any of those files with C-x r b, and move
to the position of the bookmark at the same time.

To display a list of all your bookmarks in a separate buffer, type
C-x r l (list-bookmarks). If you switch to that buffer,
you can use it to edit your bookmark definitions or annotate the
bookmarks. Type C-h m in that buffer for more information about
its special editing commands.

When you kill Emacs, Emacs offers to save your bookmark values in your
default bookmark file, `~/.emacs.bmk', if you have changed any
bookmark values. You can also save the bookmarks at any time with the
M-x bookmark-savecommand. The bookmark commands load your
default bookmark file automatically. This saving and loading is how
bookmarks persist from one Emacs session to the next.

If you set the variablebookmark-save-flag to 1, then each
command that sets a bookmark will also save your bookmarks; this way,
you don't lose any bookmark values even if Emacs crashes. (The value,
if a number, says how many bookmark modifications should go by between
saving.)

Bookmark position values are saved with surrounding context, so that
bookmark-jump can find the proper position even if the file is
modified slightly. The variablebookmark-search-size says how
many characters of context to record, on each side of the bookmark's
position.

Here are some additional commands for working with bookmarks:

M-x bookmark-load RETfilenameRET

Load a file named filename that contains a list of bookmark
values. You can use this command, as well as bookmark-write, to
work with other files of bookmark values in addition to your default
bookmark file.

M-x bookmark-write RETfilenameRET

Save all the current bookmark values in the file filename.

M-x bookmark-delete RETbookmarkRET

Delete the bookmark named bookmark.

M-x bookmark-insert-location RETbookmarkRET

Insert in the buffer the name of the file that bookmark bookmark
points to.

M-x bookmark-insert RETbookmarkRET

Insert in the buffer the contents of the file that bookmark
bookmark points to.